Zentech’s John Vaughan, VP of Sales and Marketing, is also a columnist for the I-Connect 007 family of publications (PCB007, MilAero007, SMT 007) and his column “MilAeroMarkets” is featured this month in SMT007.

Entitled,The Fourth Pillar of Defense Acquisition: Cybersecurity, his column provides an in-depth analysis of the cybersecurity requirements landscape within the DoD contracting environment and the impact of recent developments on PCB and EMS providers to the DoD.

If you are a provider of PCBs and/or electronics manufacturing services to the Department of Defense (DoD) and their prime contractors, you have no doubt noticed a significant increase in the number of Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS) flow-downs, scrutiny of your data management, audits of your cybersecurity processes, and inquiries into the status of your compliance with a variety of cybersecurity initiatives.

Quoting John from the column, “We have clearly entered a paradigm shift, with cybersecurity now joining cost, schedule, and performance as the Fourth Pillar of Defense Acquisition.”

A key takeaway is that all PCB fabricators and electronics manufacturing service providers providing electronics products to the defense sector need to immediately heighten awareness and proactively address cybersecurity if they desire to continue supporting the DoD and their prime contractors.

Future Electronicsrecently released the Q4 2018 Market Conditions Report for the electronics industry.

Zentech works closely with Future Electronics and our customers to identify andprepare in advancefor potential lead times issues. As economic activity continues to expand across all markets, it is important for OEM’s to review their upcoming requirements and forecasts carefully. There is nothing worse than working hard to land business and then learn that component lead times are going toprevent youfrom making committed deliveries to your customers.

Zentech can help! We can perform a lead time analysis for your program and best position you for success in the future in the wake of lead times creeping out, in some cases dramatically, for many component types. Contact Zentech to discuss today.

We are excited to invite you to view the newest addition to our video collection on our website. This video was captured via drone photography and provides an excellent vantage point for viewing our Baltimore HQ location.

Zentech’s primary markets are MilAero and Medical and our operations are highlycertified for mission and life critical electronics manufacturing.

On October 31st, Zentech Manufacturing, Inc. proudly participated in the White HousePledge to American’s Workers Event at the invitation of IPC CEO Mr. John Mitchell.

President Trump, along with Ivanka Trump and Larry Kudlow, Director of the United States National Economic Council held a discussion on the administration’s commitment to job creation and workforce development.

Mr. Mitchell and IPC, through their IPC Workforce Championsinitiative, committed to the creation of one million skilled workforce opportunities over the next five years.

Zentech has added the Aquastorm 200C in-line cleaner to its robust equipment set. The Aquastorm was selected via an Extensive Design of Experiment (DoE) competitive selection process by Zentech engineers.

The system’s wash and rinse cycles are closed loop, minimizing the machines impact on the environment, while maintaining an effective cleaning capability. The water utilized by the Aquastorm is first cleaned by a water treatment system. City water is precleaned by RO filters prior to treatment that removes heavy metals, anions, cations and organic contaminates from the water. Any organisms that might start to grow in the closed loop system are killed by UV light. The end result is that the water used to process Zentech assemblies is near lab purity.

On September 18 2018, the DOD released its first cyber security strategy since 2015. In addition, the Pentagon made it clear to the defense industrial base that along with the highest quality, the best cost and schedule, the expectation is that products and services also come secure.

“Cybersecurity is probably going to be what we call the fourth critical measurement. You know, we’ve got quality, cost, schedule,” Deputy Secretary Patrick Shanahan said Wednesday of how the DOD evaluates its acquisitions. “Security is one of those measures that we need to hold people accountable for.*

Manufacturing mission critical electronics that keep the US and its military safe is Zentech's top priority, and therefore Zentech remains poised and ready to support the DOD with this new cyber security initiative. For the last year Zentech has invested time, finances and personnel resources into becoming NIST 800-171, DFARS 252.204-7012 and FAR 52.204-21 compliant.

When you consider the RF applications utilized in mission critical C5ISR environments, your contract manufacturer (CM) must comprehend the issues and challenges related to manufacturing processes in RF, but also have a deep understanding of the failure mechanisms that can cause defects.

RF design is inherently more complex than any other type of design. This is because of the unique issues that must be addressed due to the extremely high frequencies of operation for these applications. For example, there are inherent challenges with power control, grounding structures, printed wiring board (PWB) stack-ups, laminate and surface finish selection, characteristic impedance control, signal path configurations, connectorization, pad geometries, solder mask, conformal coating, surface parasitics, exposure to harsh environments, fabrication effects, via sizing, component selection, and manufacturing process impacts. These numerous issues must be well understood by your CM or the potential for failure is magnified.

The following checks and balances ensure that a complex electronics build can be completed on time, on budget and with zero defects. Each practice in this process allows for adjustments or corrections to occur real time, instead of discovering them at the end of the build or worse, when it's already arrived at the end user.

New Product Introduction

To make your product a success, you need to ensure reliability and optimum functionality of the final product. If your company simply takes the data provided and immediately fabricates the product with no careful study of the data, materials or process, it will most likely result in faulty products and leaves you with unhappy customers. Careful review of the data before the manufacturing begins is extremely important.